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CHAPTER XIII

HOURS OF LABOR

VERY reduction of the hours of labor, even when not accompanied by an increase of the daily or weekly wage, is equivalent to an increase of the hourly wage. Moreover, a reduction in the day's work, all other things being equal, provides more days of work for every employee, which brings a direct increase of earnings. The length of the working day accordingly offers a fair measure of the effects of immigration on labor conditions. It is not complicated by the variations of the purchasing power of money, nor is it affected by the uncertainties of the index numbers. A reduction of hours is an unerring arithmetical fact. And, fortunately, the publications of the Federal and State labor bureaus furnish ample material for a comparative study of the hours of labor from the beginnings of the factory system in the United States.

There is unconscious humor in the first report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics on early factory conditions:

...

The earliest operatives in our mills were of the home population—an active, intelligent, industrious, thrifty, well-educated, orderly, and cleanly body of young men and women, . . . daughters of independent farmers, educated in our common schools, (for years they supplied a periodical with articles written wholly by themselves,) who could think and act for themselves, who knew right from wrong, fair treatment from oppression, and who would be grateful for the one, and would not submit to the other.'

1 Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1869-1870, pp. 91-92.

Interpolated amid this eulogy of "the American element is the following matter-of-fact statement: "The system of long hours was first adopted. . . . The general length of time per day was 14 or 15 hours." Further on it is related that "the customary time" was "from sunrise to sunset, which, in one half of the year, would give from sixteen to twelve hours, and in the other half, from nine hours to twelve."

The subject is treated more thoroughly in the recent report of the United States Bureau of Labor on "Woman and Child Wage-Earners."

The hours of labor in textile factories in the early part of the nineteenth century were much longer than within recent years. In Massachusetts in 1825 the "time of employment" in incorporated manufacturing companies was "generally 12 or 13 hours each day, excepting the Sabbath." Of the places which reported the number of hours in that year, at only two, Ludlow and Newbury, were the hours as low as 11 a day.... At Duxboro the hours were from sunrise to sunset, and at Troy (Fall River) and Wellington the employees worked "all day." In 1826, 15 or 16 hours constituted . . . the working day at Ware, Mass. . . .

By the thirties the hours appear to have been, if anything, longer. At Fall River, about 1830, the hours were from 5 a.m., or as soon as light, to 7:30 p. m., or till dark in summer, with one half hour for breakfast and the same time for dinner at noon, making a day of 131⁄2 hours. In general the hours of labor in textile factories in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts in 1832 were said to be 13 a day. But at the Eagle Mill, Griswold, Conn., it was said that 15 hours and 10 minutes actual labor in the mill were required.

At Paterson, N. J., in 1835, the women and children were obliged to be at work at 4:30 in the morning. They were allowed half an hour for breakfast and three-quarters of an hour for dinner, and then worked as long as they could see. . . At Manayunk, Philadelphia, in 1833, the hours of work were said to be 13 a day. And a little later the hours at the Schuylkill factory, Philadelphia, were "from sunrise to sunset, from the 21st of March to the 20th September, inclusively, and from sunrise until 8 o'clock p. m. during the remainder of the year." One hour was allowed for dinner and half an hour for breakfast during the first-mentioned six months, and one hour for dinner during the other half year. On Saturdays the mill was stopped "one hour before sunset for the purpose of cleaning the machinery.

Overtime, too, was frequent. Many of the corporations at Lowell . . . ran “a certain quantity of their machinery, certain portions of the year, until 9, and half past 9 o'clock at night, with the same set of hands.". . . Even the operatives were often against a reduction of hours, believing that it would result in a reduction of wages. Harriet Farley, editor of the Lowell Offering . . . thought it would work hardship to widows who were toiling for their children, to children who were toiling for their parents, and to many others.1

Toward the close of the '30's Irish immigration began to pour into the mills of Massachusetts. "Under the prejudice of nationality. . . the American element . . . retired from mill and factory."2 The retirement of the " daughters of independent farmers" and their replacement by Irish immigrants was followed by a reduction of the hours of labor in the textile mills. In 1872 the working day averaged II hours. A generation before, in 1835, it was only after a strike that the native American mill hands at Paterson, N. J., won a reduction of the working day to an average of 111⁄2 hours.4

Later immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe brought new racial elements to the mills and factories of Massachusetts. The effect of the "new immigration " upon hours of labor is shown in Table 91.

TABLE 91.

WEEKLY HOURS OF LABOR IN MASSACHUSETTS, 1872 AND 1903.5

Report of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in United States, vol. ix., pp. 62-63, 66.

2 Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 1869-1870, pp. 91-92. 3 See Table 91.

4 Report of Woman and Child Wage-Earners, vol. ix., p. 63.

5 Figures computed from Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1872, pp. 119–217; Nineteenth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, Table V.

The factory workers of Massachusettes gained during the period of the new immigration an average reduction of 7.3 hours a week, or about an hour and a quarter per day. In the woolen mills the gain in time was even slightly above the average, although forty years ago the mill operatives were mostly Irish immigrants, whereas lately the mills have been run with a polyglot help made up of all the races of Southern and Eastern Europe and Asiatic Turkey (as has been brought to public attention by the recent strike at Lawrence). The conditions in the textile mills of Massachusetts are certainly far from ideal; nevertheless fifty-eight hours a week are a great stride in advance since the period when the customary time was from sunrise to sunset, "as long as they could see." And it cannot be "said that all improvements in conditions" of the textile workers "have been secured in spite of the presence of the recent immigrant," because there was no one else to secure those improvements for them.

Taking the United States as a whole, we find that since the beginning of the "new immigration" the hours of labor have been gradually reduced; "the decrease in the hours of labor in 1907, as compared with 1890, was 5.7 per cent."2 This fact shows at least that the recent immigrant has not hindered the movement toward better conditions of employment. It would require some proof to sustain the contention of the Immigration Commission that "his availability and his general characteristics and attitude have constituted a passive opposition which has been most effective."3

The Commission has made no investigation on the subject of hours of labor, except in a casual way. There is a table giving the hours of work in one unnamed steel concern. It appears that in the blast furnace department all hands, skilled and unskilled alike, work twelve hours. In all other departments the unskilled laborers work ten hours, whereas

1 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, p. 541 Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 77, p. 4.

3 Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 1, p. 541.

the hours of the skilled and semi-skilled employees vary as follows: in 7 occupations, 8 hours; in 143 occupations, 10 hours; in 269 occupations, 12 hours. In the coal mines operated by the same concern, the laborers work 10 hours, whereas the skilled and semi-skilled employees in 34 out of 42 occupations work 12 hours, and only in 8 occupations 10 hours. The unskilled laborers in the mines and mills are mostly recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, whereas the skilled and semi-skilled positions are filled almost exclusively by native Americans and old English-speaking immigrants. The Immigration Commission itself says that "the immigrant does not appear. . . at the present time to be even competing with him [the American] in any serious way for the better-paid positions." It is evident that the longer hours of the English-speaking employees are not the result of recent immigration, since the recent immigrants themselves work shorter hours.

The report on the cotton industry shows that in 1845 the working day in the cotton mills averaged 12 hours and 10 minutes; the shortest days were in December and January, averaging 11 hours and 24 minutes, and the longest in April were as high as 13 hours and 31 minutes. At the time the report was written, the working hours were 56 per week, i. e., 10 hours per day with a half holiday on Saturday. Thus sixty years of immigration have been attended by a reduction of 2 hours and 50 minutes in the length of the working day in the cotton mills.

The most complete statistics of hours of labor are contained in the reports of the factory inspectors of the State of New York, covering an average of nearly a million factory employees annually, for 1901-1910. New York is affected by immigration more than any other State in the Union. The period under consideration has witnessed the greatest volume of immigration known in the history of the United

I

▪ Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 8, Table 281, pp. 377381. 2 Ibid., vol. 8, p. 583.

3 Ibid., vol. II, pp. 273 and 290.